I to am curious how many millions or billions lived this way for so many years?

Sure thing. @HubertManne@piefed.social can listen too.

Australia has many First Nations, and I don't know nearly anything about most of them. But they have a lot of commonalities between them. So I'm gonna tell you about the people whose land I live on, and some of what I say is going to be applicable to most of the First Nations across the continent.

Think of the First Nations as like the European Union. A community of mostly cooperating countries. Sure, there was conflict between many, but none of it was like the way white people do war. If you're the ruler of a city with a million people, you can send five thousand men-at-arms to die for you, easy. In Indigenous Australia, your community was your family. The population was small, you personally knew everyone you had any kind of social power over. So the rules of conflict were designed to minimise bloodshed. The Greeks invented the Olympics to settle political differences without violence, Indigenous conflict was much the same. More like sport than war.

Where I live, there was a gift economy. No money, no internal barter. I want you to think of your parents. They gave you food, clothes, a house, for free. When they're old, you'll probably do the same for them. Healthy families have an internal gift economy. Indigenous clans also had an internal gift economy. Take knowledge, for example. In the First Nation where I live, respect comes from great knowledge. Not from hoarding it all, and not from spraying all of it away like a firehose. Respect comes from passing on knowledge to the next generation at a good, controlled rate. From being a responsible custodian of knowledge. That's how Elders are supposed to act. And Elders are the leaders of Indigenous clans and tribes.

People often had to go travel to the land of other clans and tribes. One of the big reasons to do so, is to find love. You can't go having a baby with your cousins, Indigenous Australians didn't survive 65,000 years by doing that. The health of the gene pool is protected by the First Law. At least, that's what it's called where I'm from. The First law dictates who you can marry and have a kid with. There's a system. The systems are somewhat different in different regions, especially the names, but the point is to protect kids from inbreeding so that the community can have strong genes for thousands of years to come. When the white people showed up, the Indigenous people around here were very happy at first, because they brought a lot of new genes with them. If you marry a white person, your babies are gonna have some very robust genes. White people have so many different genes, they don't even have to worry about accidentally inbreeding! They can marry nearly anyone they want!

But I was talking about travel and trade. So Indigenous people went and travelled to the lands of other clans. Here are the rules for doing that: you go the the boundary between the two regions, and there's a campsite. You go the campsite, light a fire, and put wet leaves on it. It makes a lot of smoke, and they see the smoke. Then they light a fire. When you see their smoke, you can go meet them. You go say hi, and you ask them about their family. Always very important to do that, it's part of the First Law. Protects you from accidentally falling in love with someone you can't marry. You give them a gift, and they teach you the song of the route you're travelling. Every path through the outback has a song. The song helps you navigate and it teaches you about the natural resources in the area.

Notice that you give them a gift. It's not a payment. Not a barter like capitalists might assume it would be. The point is to establish a reciprocal relationship. Mutual kindness. Mutual obligation. That's the way the social structures were designed. So even between different clans and tribes, it's a gift economy.

No money. No state. No class. From each according to ability, to each according to need.